“It is not the role of this government to take that away from families and replace it with an indoctrination process by teachers,” Chelgren, a freshman senator from Ottumwa, said shortly after the Senate gaveled in for the afternoon.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal fired back that all the Iowa Legislature’s early childhood programs over the last 25 years were designed to make sure parents are children’s best teachers.

“That’s what our programs are about,” Gronstal said. “They’re not about indoctrination. We don’t try and change who they are. We don’t try to change them into Democrats. Or Republicans. We try to help parents be their first and best teachers.”

Gronstal said to compare Iowa’s free preschool program for all 4-year-olds to totalitarian regimes “does a disservice to a half million kids in K through 12 education, and another 25,000 or 30,000 in early childhood education.”

Iowa’s preschool program is voluntary; parents currently choose whether to send their children to a public program, a state-funded private program or a private program that gets no tax money.

Chelgren took to the microphone again to explain that his statement was “not against preschool,” but “about a parent’s prerogative to make decisions about their children.”

He said he chose to send his own children to preschool because he thought it was in their best interests.

But he said he’s heard talk about the state taking over “pre-preschool” responsibilities.

“Every argument made about preschool could be made about pre-preschool and pre-pre-preschool and as far back as you want to go until the day they are taken,” Chelgren said.

Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley defended Chelgren.

“Senator Chelgren was not accusing the education system of indoctrinating like totalitarian governments rather he was making a point that children’s minds are very impressionable at that age,” said McKinley, R-Chariton.

McKinley questioned Gov. Terry Branstad’s proposal that the state help pay for preschool for parents who earn up to $67,000.

“Do we really want to have another entitlement for families earning $66,000 a year?” McKinley said.

Under Branstad’s plan, the state would continue to pay for preschool, whether in public or private schools as it does now. All families would pay the preschool something, but fees would range from $3 a month for the neediest families to $133 a month for a family of four that earns $67,000 a year.

Democratic Sen. Tom Courtney said he recently visited Black Hawk Preschool in Burlington where a teacher named Rachel was trying to give about 40 kids a head start on kindergarten.

“Didn’t see any Nazis,” said Courtney, who lives in Burlington. “Didn’t see any indoctrination.”

Courtney said he thinks state government should pay for preschool for all kids. “I can’t figure out for the life of me why the state wouldn’t want kids taught from four years old clear into community college,” he said.

Democratic Sen. Matt McCoy said as a college history major, he learned that the Nazis “closed the public libraries, burned the books, closed the schools, shot the teachers, shot the priests, shot the educated class, so that there were a bunch of ignoramuses which made up the Nazi regime running the country. It was about not educating people.”

McCoy, of Des Moines, added: “That is not what’s happening in the Iowa school system today.”

Chelgren said he thinks preschool is a good idea, but federally-funded Head Start programs are available for help low-income parents who want to educate their children with preschool.

Chelgren, in his own words: “As Senator McCoy pointed out, the Chinese are taking 2- and 3-year-olds and educating them. And as a student of history, I also know the Nazis, the Soviets, a whole variety of groups, a whole variety of countries, take their children because it’s not just up to age six they’re so malleable. The day after they’re born is when they learn the most percentage-wise. And so what question I have for this body and the question I have in general, if it is all about indoctrinating a child, I would use the exact same arguments that the Nazis used, that we should take children immediately, as soon as we recognize they have potential. What I would challenge with us instead is to put the responsibility on the parents. Because it is parents’ responsibility and families’ responsibility to make sure that in the formative year of growing the child, they are taught the values and they are taught and educated by their families and they have that bond, that maternal and paternal bond, that is developed during that time. It is not the role of this government to take that away from families and replace it with an indoctrination process by teachers.”